The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com):Joe needs a date
for a faculty dinner. Kenny suggests he take Ginger, so he does. Richard is
ready to go home, and tells Laura he'd like to be part of the baby's birth.
Laura goes to see his doctor who tells
her only to go back to him if she's there to stay, but not if it's out of pity.
Gary and Abby continue their affair, but he feels so guilty that he ends it.
However, he keeps watching Abby from the window, and Val is extremely
suspicious. Val asks Gary if they're having an affair, and he locks himself
into the bathroom. Val then goes to see Abby, who tells her "I'm not
saying we are having an affair, and I'm not saying we're not. I am saying that
I can have him anytime I want." Val slaps Abby. Later, Gary sees Abby and
kisses her.

Welcome to China Dolls!I think now would be a good time to point out
that we are officially entering a time in the show where I will no longer
immediately be able to remember what an episode is about just by hearing the
title.For whatever reason, with seasons
one and two, prior to this viewing, if you said the titles to me, I would
pretty much immediately remember what the episode was about.With Community Spirit, I’d be like, “Oh yeah, that’s the one where J.R. comes to open up
oil drilling.”With Let Me Count the Ways, I’d say, “That’s the one where Karen almost
has an affair.”With The Lie, I’d be like, “Laura gets
raped.”With Chance of a Lifetime, I’d say, “That’s the one with Brian Dennehy where Richard loses his job.”With The Three Sisters, I’d be like, “That’s
the one weirdo haunted house episode with the ghost sisters.”But now we are reaching a point where the
titles are just titles to me, where I’ll start up an episode and really not
remember what’s in store based on the title.I think Nightmarks the last
episode that I started and was like, “Oooh, this is Night, omigod!”This is
probably just an effect of having so many damn episodes.When you’re within the first two or three
seasons, you have less episodes, so it’s easier to remember them by title and
all that, but it gets harder to remember as you move along.

My point is that I felt rather
fresh and virginal as China Dolls
started up, but I knew it was gonna be a good one, especially based on that
thirty second preview which showed a classic
exchange between Val and Abs that will forever go down in the annals of
primetime soap history (we’ll get to it).After the thirty second preview and the opening credits, we actually
open on a shot of, well, china dolls sitting on a shelf.Not only are we looking at these creepy china
dolls on their shelf, but this is where the episode title is displayed on
screen as well as the episode credits.Too literal?Hmmm, maybe, but I
like that we’re getting started right away with a theme and we are seeing something
physical to help us represent that theme.

Okay, we pan out from the china
dolls and realize we are in a room.A
hotel room?A motel room?An apartment room?At first we’re not sure, but eventually we
realize this is a hotel (and it seems to be a pretty nice one; I mean, how many
hotels decorate their rooms with freaking creepy ass china dolls?) and that it’s the meeting place for Abs and Gary and
their debauchery and torrid affair.Now
might be a good time to mention that I love seeing people having affairs on TV
and in movies.I’m not really sure why,
because I do have certain moral objections to carrying on long, ongoing affairs
(remember that I’m gay and our standards for what is cheating and what is not
in a relationship can be very flexible, and I certainly don’t adhere to those
heteronormative standards; I'm not a proponent of SUPER DUPER STRICT MONOGHOMOUS relationships but I am a proponent of honesty and always telling your partner the truth), but for whatever reason I just love seeing them on
the TV screen.Maybe it’s because it
just looks so damn fun?I dunno.So I wanna make sure to stress that I believe
it is wrong for Gary and Abs to have
this affair behind Val’s back, and I believe Val deserves to be treated better
by her husband because she has always been a good wife to him.At the same time, I just love watching this,
and I love everything about it.For me,
this is nighttime drama at its finest, and when Abs and Gary start making out
and he picks her up and carries her onto the bed and throws her down and the
saxophone kicks in, I’m in Heaven.I
wanna make special mention of that saxophone, because I love it.It’s not
an ‘80s nighttime soap torrid love affair unless you throw some saxophone
in there, and that’s final.

This is a significant way to
begin the episode because it signals a few important things to us viewers.First of all, it shows that Abs and Gary’s
little roll in the sack last week was not an isolated incident, that there was
no off-screen dialogue where Gary said, “I think we should just forget this
ever happened and never do it again.”Nope, instead the two have chosen to continue carrying on, and the fact
that they’ve even got the hotel room ready to go and they seem very at home in it tells me they are
getting good and comfortable about doing this.

Not
too long after this, we have a lovely little scene between Val and Lilimae in
which Lilimae, in classically
direct fashion, asks Val how long she’s going to allow this to keep going
on.She never comes right out and says,
“Gary’s having an affair,” but she’s like, “Ooooooooooh, breakfast meetings,
lunch meetings, dinner meetings, I’m surprised they aren’t putting on weight,”
at which point I turned to My Beloved Grammy and said, “They’re burning it off
with all the sex.”I’m really very
witty, you see.

Anyway,
Val says something about how, “I have a very delicate situation on my hands,”
and how she doesn’t wish to discuss it anymore.I know I tend to focus on the micro-details of certain scenes rather
than what’s going on in the plot and dialogue and characters, and I’m gonna do
it again here.I love the fact that Val is cleaning the windows while this scene
takes place.It’s one of those small
details that helps to keep KL grounded
even as affairs and adultery are going on all around us.When on Dallas
would you ever see someone using Windex to clean their windows while
carrying on a conversation?All the
conversations on Dallas were, to
paraphrase Patrick Duffy, “In boardrooms and bedrooms.”On KL,
things always have a way of feeling familiar with me, and it’s the small things
like this that help to capture that.

So
to keep you all up to date, let’s remember that Lilimae is well aware of what’s
going on between Abs and Gary (or at least she looked out the window at like
two in the morning back in Acts of Love
and saw that Gary was staying late at Abby’s house), but she hasn’t told Val
yet.I think I understand her reticence;
she knows that Val will be absolutely crushed if she just says, “I saw them at
Abby’s house really late the other night when you weren’t home,” so she’s sorta
feeling her way around the situation.I
also think it’s worth noting that Lilimae is starting to change from mostly
comic relief in the background into one of the main players (she’ll be in the
scrolling credits next season) and we are starting to see her really
incorporate into the storylines at this point, and we are getting to see Julie Harris start to show off her dramatic chops.I’m very excited about where all this is leading.

Gary
and Abs pretty much fall into the classic trap of losing all their discretion
and forgetting all about tact.See,
Uncle Joe is hanging around Knots Landing Motors because he needs to find a
date for some faculty dinner (we’ll get to his less interesting storyline a
little later), so he’s thinking of asking Abs out.However, just as he’s approaching Abs to ask
her, Gary comes bursting out of his office door and, speaking really loudly,
almost yelling, nearly going so far as to use a loudspeaker or maybe broadcast
it over the intercom for all workers and customers to hear, he goes, “Oh, Abby,
about Friday night….”Then he realizes
Uncle Joe is standing right in front of him so Abs quickly tires to rectify the
situation and is like, “Oh, that made up business thing I just invented right
this second?Yeah, that’s what we’re
talking about!”Uncle Joe’s eyes look
very sly and we know he’s getting clued in to what’s really going on.

Gary
has some hilarious moments this week and that’s the first one, although it’s
minor compared to his masterpiece, his piece de resistance, which shows up
closer to the ending of the ep.This is
pretty much a plot device to get Uncle Joe smart about the affair, but I just
love how flippant and careless Gary is about this.This affair’s been going on for, what, a
week?And he’s already bursting out of
offices and going, “Oh, Abby, about Friday night, when I plan to come over and
put my penis in you again….”

While
we’re at Knots Landing Motors, I wanna take a little side road and discuss
something I keep forgetting to bring up.Remember how season two ended with that mysterious moustached fellow
glaring while working on cars at Knots Landing Motors and this all led up to
Sid’s brakes failing and him taking that big plunge off the cliff?Well, this whole season, every couple of
episodes, My Beloved Grammy has been like, “We still haven’t figured out what
happened to that guy who messed with Sid’s car,” and I have to be like, “Don’t
worry, it’s coming.”But only after she
has brought it up so much have I realized that they really do just forget all
about that for all of season three, don’t they?We’ve have lots of Knots Landing Motors footage throughout season three,
but it’s always been interoffice dramas and flirtations between Gary and Abs;
they’ve never gotten back to the conspiracy against Sid.Now, if I remember correctly, they do return to this and wrap it up in a
nice tidy bow as we enter season four, so it’s not like the storyline is
forgotten.But I just think it’ s
interesting that it literally vanished for the entirety of season three before
being concluded in season four; in my memories it was more of an ongoing
thing.Do you think the writers just
forgot about it throughout this season and then realized they should probably
give it some closure with the next season?Or do you think the writers really were playing the long game, the
really long game, and saying, “We’ll bring this up in the climax of season two
and then not wrap it up until the beginning of season four.”Readers, please gimme your opinions, cuz I
would love to hear them.

Anyway,
later that night, still at Knots Landing Motors, Uncle Joe pays Gary another
visit and this scene has something in it that got me real excited and harkened
all the way back to our first Brief Dallas
Interlude, Reunion: Part One.Remember how when we first met David Ackyord
Gary in Las Vegas and he said how he had not just a drinking problem but also a
gambling problem?And remember how I
asked if this would ever be brought up or mentioned again ever?Well it is, right here!In this scene, Uncle Joe asks Gary if he had
a gambling problem at some point and Gary says yes.I was so happy and got so excited!I was like, “Good on the writers for not
forgetting about that,” because I was convinced that they had. Uncle
Joe uses gambling as an analogy for the affair.He’s like, “You know, inherently, the gambler always loses because the
gambler always wants to lose.How crazy
is that?”Obviously he’s saying that by
gambling with Abby, Gary is going to lose Val, and when Gary’s like, “What are
you trying to say, guy from Graveyard Shift?” Uncle Joe is like, “I think I just said it.”This is Uncle Joe’s coolest scene yet, and
I’ve gotten moderately more interested in his character than I was before just
because of how much I liked this scene and this speech.

Oh
yeah, and one more thing about the small details before I move on to a new
scene.I really like how this scene
doesn’t just begin with Uncle Joe and Gary talking, but instead takes some time
to show us a worker interacting with some grumpy old man who is dissatisfied
about something or other.The two are
talking about the guy’s car and the quality of the service, and the old guy is
getting kinda irritated and so Gary comes into the scene to help diffuse the
situation, and Uncle Joe follows after him.See, on most shows they would just open with Uncle Joe being like, “Hi,
Gary, I wanna talk to you,” but here we get some small extra details regarding
the business of Knot Landing Motors, and I like that.

Later,
Gary gets home and receives a firm reminder of what a lovely wife Val is,
because she has got him a year’s subscription to Fortune and tells him, “If you’re gonna be a big business man, you
gotta know what’s going on in the world of business.”Yikes.Then they hug and Gary’s face looks super guilty (even though earlier in
the ep he declared to Abs that he was feeling, “No guilt whatsoever;” we see
how his emotions are at war in this moment) and he says, sorta sad, “What would
I do without you, Val?”Val’s all like,
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.”It’s a painfully uncomfortable moment.

Thanks
to Val’s gift and Gary’s newly found feelings of guilt, there is a brief stall
in the affair of Gary and Abs, a moment where Gary decides, very very briefly,
that they should call the whole thing off.They meet up at their usual little hotel room to shag, but instead of
shagging, Gary calls a halt to the affair, saying it was a mistake and they’ve
gotta end it now.I didn’t remember any
of this, and what struck me most about this scene was the very end of it.See, Abs tries to
act all cool and distant, like it’s no big deal that Gary wants to end it, and
they part peacefully, but then we get this really tiny little moment after Gary
leaves where Abs starts to cry!Omigod,
this part was awesome, and what made it so awesome was that it was super
fast!Again, the writers and director
and actors could have played this multiple ways.They could have just had Gary leave the scene
and then we cut to a new scene, or perhaps, for a more “soapy” ending, they
could have had Abs get either a wicked smile, like she’s hatching an evil plot,
or get really over-the-top angry (“Two , four, six, eight, who do I
annihilate?”), but instead they just give her like, one microsecond to cry and then
they cut to a new scene.

What
does this mean?Why show this?Well, I’m gonna say right now that I actually
believe Abs does love Gary.I don’t think she just has a lust for him or
some need for him as a conquest or as a way to hurt Val.I think, since moving on to the cul-de-sac,
she has been in love with Gary and I actually believe she stays in love with
Gary all the way until she leaves the show in 1989.Maybe some would disagree with me, but I
think part of what makes Abs such a fabulous character is her intricacies.She is never just presented as some evil,
adulterous bitch; she has layers.She is
often deceitful and a liar and a schemer, but then she does have genuine feelings and emotions, like when she cried
because of breaking the coffee cup Sid gave her (what episode was that, again?)
or in the way she loves her children or the classic
Olivia/cocaine storyline that we’re gonnaget a few seasons down the line (prepare for my write-ups on those in,
oh, about three years).So I think she’s
truly, legitimately upset that Gary wants to end this affair, and that’s why
she cries.From an artistic standpoint,
I love the choice made to barely focus on her crying.They don’t make a big deal out of it, just
sorta show a second of it before we cut away to a new scene.Great stuff.

This
episode has a theme of windows running through it that pretty much sets the
stage for every single episode of Melrose Place ever made.Remember how every
week on that show, we would have the characters gazing out their windows and
being like, “Who’s going home with so and so?!”Well, it’s happening here, too, because Gary can’t get enough of staring
out the living room window and intently watching Abby’s house, and it leads to the
absolute most gut bustingly hysterical scene of the entire episode, a scene so
funny that I laughed so hard I couldn’t even follow all the dialogue for a few
minutes afterwards.It’s sad to say that
my mere description of this scene can’t possibly do justice to how campy and
hilarious and wonderful it is, though I shall try.

Basically,
Gary’s continuing to obsessively stare out the window, which worries Val.He’s also just acting like a psycho in
general, jumping up off the couch and saying, “Let’s go out!”Then seconds later he’s like, “Never mind, I
don’t want to go out.”But then he hears
Abs arriving home, her car door slamming, and he leaps up like his ass is on
fire and frantically says to Val, “I have to go talk to Abs about something!” Shrieking Bernard Herrmann violins start
to overpower the soundtrack while Gary runs for dear life across the street,
screaming, “Abby!”Then he reaches her
front door and starts beating the hell out of it and screaming, “Abby, open up,
damn it!”When she answers the door, he
comes flying into the living room all sweaty and crazy, convinced that she has
brought home another man to shag, but instead it turns out to be some old lady
who, presumably, babysits the children or something.So Abs is like, “Mrs. Old Lady, this is my
neighbor, Gary, please say hello to this sweaty, insane man who just sprinted
across the street to pound violently on my door and please ignore those
shrieking violins.” Like
I said, I probably can’t represent the sheer genius of this scene or properly
explain why it made me laugh so hard, except to say that it is so over-the-top and Gary is just losing
his cool so utterly and completely and it’s just hilarious to me how obvious he
is acting towards Val; at this point, there is just no conceivable way that she
can’t figure out what is going on.

But
anyway, Gary says to Abs, “I can’t stand the thought of you with another man,”
and Abs points out that she wasn’t with another man; she was with her kids and
some old lady.But then she kicks him in
the balls real nice by saying, “But I will be with another man soon.”Gary can’t handle the thought; it’s tearing
him apart.How much longer until he
gives in to his carnal nature once again?

Well,
not too much longer, but before he does that, we get that fabulous
confrontation between Val and Abs.This
is the scene I mentioned earlier that was a classic when it aired, is a classic
today, and shall always and forever remain a classic.See, after finally deciding that she is
damned mad and she’s not gonna take it anymore, Val marches across the street
to Abby’s house to finally speak with her, and she lets herself in and she
slams the door behind her and she says, “Are you having an affair with my
husband?”Abs skirts the issue for
awhile by insulting Val a lot rather than saying yes or no, but then finally
she gets to deliver this classic line: “I’m not saying we’re having an affair,
and I’m not saying we’re not, but I am saying I can have him anytime I
want.”Then Val slaps Abs, which was
fabulous and marks, I think, the second slap Abs has been on the receiving end
of (the first was from Laura in Moments of Truth last season).Yes, ladies
and gentlemen, I think any KL fan
should know this scene very well and it will always be remembered fondly.I think it’s an important one because this is
when the jig is finally up between Val and Abs.Remember how I noted through season two and most of three how strange it
was to see Val and Abs interacting and being rather friendly with each other?Well, I think this scene marks the end of
that; for the rest of time, the two shall remain sworn enemies.

Oh
yeah, and I don’t want to write about this whole episode and skip out on a
fabulous little exchange between Abs and Karen.I feel like I haven’t mentioned Karen much this week, and that’s because
she’s sorta hanging out in the background throughout the ep, but she gets one
killer line, and it’s right here near the end.She comes by to tell Abs that Richard will be returning from the
hospital soon and would she please go by the house and water his plants for
him, straighten things out, make it look pretty over there, you know what I
mean?Abs doesn’t want to and is like,
“Karen, I’m really busy with something involving my vagina and I just can’t be
bothered,” and then Karen, my beloved Karen, who is never afraid to stand up to
someone and be totally direct, says, “I forgot, your specialty is wrecking
homes, not straightening them out.”Oh
God yes, go Karen, I love you so much.Anyway, these words are enough for Abs to take the Avery key and agree
to go over and water some plants.

To
set the stage for our climax scene (and I do mean that quite literally), Abs is
doing some sexy plant watering at the Avery house in her incredibly short shorts (they are red and
I am pretty certain that this shot of her doing some sexy watering will make
its way into the scrolling credits next season) while Gary looks out the window
and yearns for her.Finally, he can’t
take it anymore, those short shorts are just too short and he can’t merely stare out this window any longer, so
he removes himself from his home and marches over to the Avery house to
shag Abby again.He enters the house,
she spins around, the two stare longingly at each other, waiting for that
saxophone to kick in again, and once it does, they can’t resist each other any
longer and fall back into each other’s adulterous arms, marking the fabulous
ending to our episode.Oh yeah, I also
wanna note the fact that this shag takes place in the Avery house.They are now reaching the point where their
loins are burning for each other so hard that they can’t even wait to do it in
their own homes or in a hotel; they must do it right here in somebody else’s
home, all very Body Heat style, wouldn't you agree?God, I love it.

Okay,
so that’s the end of the episode, but don’t worry, cuz we’ve still got other
characters to cover, some more interesting than others.I guess I’ll start with the less interesting
ones, although even they are sorta interesting,
and that would be Uncle Joe and Ginger.Okay, remember I said sorta interesting,
and that’s about as far a compliment as I can throw Ginger.I’m still itching for her and Kenny to leave
town (just one more season!), but she’s not too bad this week, and I mean, at
least she’s doing something.The fact that Kenny and Ginger remain in the
scrolling credits and yet are given so little to do (remember how they just
disappeared for Night?) remains this
weird thing where you know the writers are, in general, not even bothering to
give them anything to do, so at least this week they’re making an effort.

Anyway,
an early scene is this ep shows Uncle Joe in the kitchen getting a phonecall
from Lorraine.You all remember
Lorraine, right?No?You don’t remember the incredibly boring and
forgettable lady who came into town and marred the episode Letting Go?Well anyway,
when Uncle Joe first got this phone call, I was like, “Oh no, don’t tell me
she’s coming back for another episode!”I remembered looking at her IMDb and seeing she just had that one KL credit, but for a minute I still got
nervous.Fortunately, she’s just calling
to tell him she won’t be coming to town and she won’t be appearing in any more
episodes.By the way, am I remembering
incorrectly, or didn’t these two split up in Letting Go? Wasn’t that the
arc of their storyline that week?Deciding they weren’t meant to be together?So what are they doing talking on the phone
this week?In any case, it doesn’t
matter, as it’s just a plot device to get Uncle Joe looking for a date.

Okay,
so he tries a few people, including Abs (that’s the scene where Gary busts out
and says, “About Friday night”), but finally he settles on Ginger.Kenny’s cool with it and says, “We’ve got a
real ‘80s marriage over here.”I always
love whenever characters refer to the decade they’re inhabiting, and the last
time we had someone do that was back in season two when Abs was talking to her
ex-husband and said, “Come on, Jeff, this is the 1980s.”I always love that and I’m gonna keep my ears
open for more of it.But anyway, since
Kenny and Ginger are boring and haven’t gotten a storyline since Possibilities(which Kenny wrote
himself), they are totally cool with Uncle Joe taking out Ginger.

This
storyline was weird for me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.Were the writers considering getting these
two together?Or were they thinking of
having Ginger run off and have an affair of her own?As far as I remember, Kenny and Ginger stay
together until they leave the show and there’s no more adultery on either end,
but Ginger and Andy Moore in Possibilitiescombined with her and Uncle Joe this week make me wonder what’s going
on.Now, I’m not just saying this
because of the fact that Uncle Joe takes her out; I think it’s understood that
this is just a sorta friendly date because he needs a date for this faculty
dinner thing; I’m referring to a later scene.

After
the faculty dinner (which we thankfully don’t have to see; we’re too busy
following Gary and Val and Abs for most of the ep), Uncle Joe drives Ginger home,
but before dropping her off, they have this conversation about romance and
dating.Ginger goes on about how she
wants Uncle Joe to kiss her, even though she knows logically that she’s happily
married and has a beautiful daughter (these are her words, not mine).Uncle Joe, like, tenderly kisses her hand or
something, but I don’t think they kiss on the lips, or if they do, I forgot
about it.In any case, it’s a strange
little scene and Ginger’s dialogue about missing her dating years made me
wonder if perhaps the writers were considering cooking up an adultery plot for
her (perhaps with Andy Moore?) before abandoning it.Or hell, maybe Ginger does have an affair in season four and I just clear forgot about
it; I guess we’ll have to proceed forward to find out.

That’s
it for that storyline, but the one I like much better this week involves my
beloved Richard and Laura.We get quite
a bit of Laura visiting Richard at his new sanitarium this week, and it’s good
stuff.I remind you that this looks like
one of those fun, friendly sanitariums where you are free to pretty much just
hang out and do whatever you want, so for most of their visits, Richard and
Laura are walking around the grounds, which are vast and lovely.Also, Laura meets a fellow sanitarium resident
named Nicholas, and I note this only because I discovered some interesting
facts about the actor who plays Nicholas.His name is Barry Cutler and as soon as I saw him, I was like, “I
recognize that guy.”Well, he did appear
in an episode of the landmark work of demented television genius, 7th Heaven, and while I have seen every episode of that
show (not kidding), I don’t remember him from that.I’ve also seen Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigoloseveral thousand times, mostly because
it’s one of my dad’s favorite movies, but I don’t recall him in that,
either.What struck me when I looked at
his IMDb was that he’s already been in two
KL eps before this one, playing different characters.It says he was in Chance of a Lifetimeas “Counterperson” and The Loudest Wordas “Hot Dog Vendor.”I remember none of these, do you?Where would there have even been a hot dog vendor in The Loudest Word?You’ll all remember that was back in season
two and was that bizarre one-off episode where Val got cancer that was never
mentioned again ever, and didn’t most of that ep take place in a hospital?Was there a hot dog stand in the
hospital?In any case, I remember
neither of these other characters he portrayed, but by being in three eps as a
different character in each, Barry Cutler is officially A Tangled Knot.

I
liked this little character a lot, by the way, and I think he’s supposed to be
a Nam vet, because when he comes up to say hi to Richard and Laura, he sorta
drifts off into his own world and mentions opening the doors and finding the
bodies of, I think, dead babies or something.As soon as he mentioned that, I immediately thought of Nam, but if you
disagree, please tell me.Oh yeah, and
he also mentions something about, “Their faces looking like china dolls,” again
calling back to the title of this ep.

The
bulk of the Laura/Richard storyline this week involves Laura wrestling with how
involved she wants to be in Richard’s life and whether she should move out of
the Kristin/Dallas apartment and move
back in with Richard.She talks to
Richard’s doctor, who tells her if she’s gonna move back in with him, she’d
better make it for good, that the very worst thing she could do is move back
in, get his hopes up, and then leave again and crush his spirits.See, Richard’s insurance is about to run out
and so he’ll have to return home, and should that be alone or with Laura as his
supporter?Clearly Laura has a lot of
thinking to do.

I
really love all this stuff.In fact, I’m
tempted to say I love it even more than the Gary/Val/Abs stuff, but I
dunno.It might just be my love affair
with Richard and Laura and their tumultuous relationship.I could probably watch a show that was
entirely about these two and had no other characters; there’s something about
their complexities that is just endlessly watchable for me.I also just admire how well written it
is.The writers are continuing to walk a
difficult tightrope because it was only two eps ago that Richard went
completely crazy and held Laura hostage with a gun.In another show, it would feel bizarre or
stupid to have Laura and him calmly interacting again just two weeks after
that, but in KL it feels organic and
realistic, and I think that’s a testament to the honest way that Constance and
The Plesh portray their characters.

There’s
also a fabulous little scene between Laura and Karen a little bit later.This takes place in the Avery kitchen and
involves Laura accidentally breaking a gift that Nicholas gave her and asked
her to give to Richard.After smashing
this gift, Laura has a little freakout on Karen and says, “I should never have
listened to you,” and starts to talk about how confused she is about Richard
and so on.Now, I was a bit confused at
first because I briefly thought this meant that Laura would be moving back in with
him; after all, she is standing in
the kitchen, is she not?But no, she is
referring merely to going to visit Richard, which she would not have done
without the bit of pressure Karen gave her.What I like here is that she has a small little freakout, she calms
down, and the scene goes on.It doesn’t
turn into some big dramatic fight between her and Karen, but rather just
observes these characters and their behavior together.

Overall,
even with the Uncle Joe/Ginger storyline coming in easily at third place, I dug
all the stories this week and thought there was a lot to love in China Dolls.I forgot to mention a few small stylistic
things that run through the ep, even, things that keep it feeling cinematic and
not like TV.One of them is a series of
smooth transitions from scene to scene.For instance, there’s a fabulous one where we cut from Richard and Laura
to Gary and Abs.In this case, Richard
and Laura are walking the grounds of the sanitarium, being photographed in a
long shot, and as the scene ends, the camera glides into a flowerbed and
focuses in on a yellow flower, before dissolving to a different yellow flower, zooming out, and revealing that we are now
in the adultery motel room and Abs is waiting to meet up with Gary.See, that’s some good style, am I right?Do you think the folks over on Dallas would ever bother with a stylish
little cut like that?Nah, I think
they’d be more concerned with just getting from scene to scene.Again, this is TV, and TV is filmed on a tighter
schedule than a movie and stylistic sacrifices have to be made (I am referring
to, say, pre-year-2000 television, by the way, before cable really took over
and completely upped the game on how television is made and filmed and
watched), so I appreciate when the creative team here at KL goes the extra step to keep their eps looking sleek and
interesting rather than just quick cutting from one scene to another.

Also,
there’s a weather theme running throughout this episode.It’s pretty much raining all the way from
start to finish this week, and there’s a real stormy weather/cloudy skies thing
going on.I think this works both
literally and metaphorically, as in there is literally rain and drizzle falling from the sky, but also in the
fact that stormy weather lies ahead for these characters, you know what I mean?

Overall,
great ep.So far, Nightis still holding the top spot for quite possibly the best
episode of the season (or entire series), but this last stretch of eps leading us into the finale
has just been pretty much 100% great, and I’m so pleased to see the show really
finding its footing after that last batch of clunky, all-over-the-place eps
that included, say, Reunion, Cricket, and Silver Shadows.This upswing
reminds me of the climactic moments of season two, when we had to sit through Moments of Truthand Man of the Hourand were then rewarded
with More Than Friends, Designs, and Squeezeplay.The difference
here, and the thing that gets me so excited, is I know we are not going to
build up to a great finale, then have a great premiere for the new season, and
then sorta fizzle and get weird and episodic again.In this case, the stretch of great episodes
will just take us right into a solid, full, great season and then another great
season and then another great one and so on and so forth until the end of
time.In this way, I think I’m gonna say
that the upswing in quality taking place here at the end of season three is
even better and more impressive than the one from season two.

So
in case you didn’t get it, I think China
Dolls is great and I thoroughly enjoyed nearly everything about it.I am very eager to get to our final episode
of the season on Thursday, so stay tuned for me to come back and discuss Living Dangerously.

The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com):Karen and Laura
visit Richard in the hospital where he is getting better. Val makes a romantic
dinner for Gary, but he says he has a meeting with Abby and a client and he
promised she'd baby-sit Olivia. Upset, Val
takes Olivia and they drive into the mountains. They eat at a diner, but she
forgot her wallet, so she waitresses to pay for the meal. A truck has
overturned on the freeway, so they have to stay overnight. The diner owner
kisses Val, but she says she can't sleep with him. Meanwhile, with Val away,
Gary and Abby sleep together but he's consumed with guilt. Lilimae sees Gary's
car at Abby's and waits up for him, but he doesn't come home. The next day, Val
apologizes to Gary and says she'll be more lenient with his business. They hug,
and Lilimae shoots Gary a look that could kill.

After the absolutely incredible
television masterpiece that was John Pleshette’s brilliant, brilliant Night, how does the follow up
episode compare?Well, actually Acts of Love does a surprisingly good
job of keeping events flowing and stories percolating even if it’s not nearly
the gut punch of intensity that Nightwas.While it’s maybe not a show stopper of an
episode, I think we’ll find that there’s plenty of good stuff to talk about
here, so let’s explore.

The Gary/Val/Abs love triangle
was put briefly on hold last week, but now it’s back to the forefront, and
after all this buildup that has lasted for nearly two full seasons, we are
finally going to see it happen, or at least we think we are as the episode begins.See, in the thirty second preview we get a quick flash of Gary and Abs
making out on a beach, and I was thinking, “Oh shit, is this the one where they
finally do it?”I couldn’t remember,
honestly, and while the thirty second preview got me all good and excited,
let’s not forgot that we got a flash of them making out in the preview for Power Play a few eps back and that
turned out to be a false alarm, just a quick make out before Gary called a halt
to the proceedings.Having some prior
knowledge from my first time watching the series of how this season would conclude
and knowing that we only have three episodes until that finale, I had a strong
feeling that this would be the one where Abby's powers of seduction finally win
over Gary.

Acts of Love opens right away and just grabs you by the balls as
soon as the opening credits are done.We
are pretty much thrown right into a fight between Gary and Val, maybe one of
their angriest, snarkiest fights yet.See, Gary is planning to run off to somewhere
with Abs for yet another one of their business dinners, something that seems to
be going on every day now.In this case,
they’re meeting some rich white guy to hopefully invest some money in their methanol
idea, and it’s not just the fact that Gary’s running off on Val, continuing to
break their prior deal from Exposé,
but he’s also turning Val into a babysitter by shoving Olivia at her and being
like, “Yeah, watch her.”Make no
mistake, Val loves Olivia and has a special bond with her because of all those
baby-Lucy-being-stolen-from-her-weird-mommy-issues, but she is still rightfully
annoyed to just be ordered to babysit Abby’s kid without any prior approval
from herself.

In any case, we are expanding on
that last shot of Exposé, that
glorious little moment when Val realized that Gary was breaking their deal and
her face got all cold and stoical and she delivered the letter to New York; you
all remember that?In this case, Gary’s
thoughtlessness has pushed her over the edge and she grabs Olivia and decides
to take her on a Thelma and Louisestyle
road trip.They hop in the car (and we
get some hilariously bad rear screen projection that kept making me think of
whenever Leslie Nielsen would drive his police cruiser on Police Squad!) and decide to go on
a little trip.Olivia doesn’t want
to go to Disneyland, which Val offers (and which made me remember that, yeah,
the characters live in California and can just head out for Disneyland if they
feel like it), and instead wants to go to, um, someplace.I’ve already forgotten what exactly it is
Olivia requests to see, but in any case, it doesn’t matter, because she and Val
get lost.The next time we return to the
car and the bad rear screen projection, it’s night time and Val declares,
“We’re lost,” to which Olivia has the hilarious
witticism, “But we’re making great time!”

Anyway, Val and Olivia wind up
in some diner run by this guy who keeps calling himself “The Kid.”His actual character name is Willie McCoy and
he is played by Sonny Shroyer.I looked
this guy up because he gets billed as a guest star in the episode's opening credits, so I
figured he must be somebody.Well, he
was in Forrest Gumpand once I knew
that I was able to place him (he’s the college football coach who says, “He
must be the stupidest son of a bitch alive, but he sure is fast”) but it looks
like he played “Enos” for 98 episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard.While I know this
show is beloved by some people, I’ve never seen a single episode and don’t even
really know what it’s about, so this doesn’t exactly help me go, “Oh yeah, it’s
that guy.”In any case, I’m gonna assume that’s probably
the role he’s most famous for and is probably why his name gets to be in the
credits at the head of this episode.

I’m not sure I like this
character.There’s kinda an arc to him
this week in which he and Val do not get along at first, but then they sorta
bond and eventually become something like friends.I’ll walk us through it, but suffice it to
say that even by the end of this episode, I wasn’t sure I really liked or
trusted this guy; there was just something about his folksy, down-home, country
charm that I didn’t like and it rubbed me the wrong way.In any case, Val and him are certainly at
odds with each other right away.Poor
Val (POOR VAL!) is grumpy when she and Olivia arrive and all she wants is some
food, but this guy’s doing the whole charming country guy thing and is like,
“Hey, a country girl, we’ve got a lot in common!”Val’s like, “What we have is common is that
we are hungry and you serve food, and that is all.”

After the meal, Val realizes
that she made an uh-oh and forgot to bring her wallet with her when she left
the house this morning.She tries to get the
Dukes of Hazzardguy to take a
personal check, but he won’t do it, citing house rules.Being a good honest girl, Val offers to wait
tables for awhile, and he accepts.I
feel kinda sorry for Olivia, who has to just hang out in this noisy diner with
a bunch of rednecks while Val waits tables, but it’s also kinda fun to see Val
slip so comfortably into waitressing (and we haven’t seen her do this since way
way back in our very first Brief Dallas Interlude,
Reunion: Part One) and it also gave
me a little KL boner because it made
me think of a certain storyline we’re going to be seeing with Valene come
season six.

However, something else I
noticed going on this week is a rather cinematic storytelling device used to
demonstrate the two separate worlds that Gary and Val are occupying.While Val is in the midst of being a waitress
and dealing with all these loud customers and their demands (which, by the way,
she actually does very well; much like riding a bike, it seems like waiting
tables is something you never forget how to do once you’ve learned it), we then
cut to Gary and Abs at some fancy bar in wherever it is they went off to.There’s a real dichotomy at work here, you
see, and it sorta runs throughout the episode, because we cut from the chaotic,
noisy diner with Val to this nice, clean, reserved, richie-rich style bar where
Gary and Abs are all dressed up in a nice suit and dress, waiting for the
arrival of some big shot business guy.Gary and Val are spiritually beginning to separate away from eachother,
starting to occupy different worlds, and this is a physical way to show that,
and I thought it worked rather well.

Over here in the Gary and Abs
storyline, they are awaiting the arrival of a Transmorpher business guy named
Max Craig.This character is played by
James Karen, who is one of those character actors who is simply in everything
ever made (I note that he appeared in an episode of the KL ripoff Melrose Place),
and just to prove that My Beloved Grammy can often have a sharper eye than
myself, as soon as he wandered onscreen, she goes, “Wasn’t he on Dallas?”I shrugged and said, “Probably,” and when I did my research later, I
discovered that yes, indeed he was on Dallas,
and not too long after the airing of this episode, either.Looks like he appears in three episodes
spanning 1982 to 1983, playing Elton Lawrence, and those eps were Barbecue Three, Mama Dearest, and The
Reckoning.

Anyway, once the Transmorpher
arrives, Abs goes to work with her shrewd business dealings and subtle verbal
manipulations.She even pulls the Ewing
Oil card, probably knowing that Dallas is
currently the #1 show on television while poor KL is struggling at #43, by subtly implying that she and Gary are
receiving financial backing from Ewing Oil and J.R. over in Texas.When the Transmorpher says, “Are you saying
that Ewing Oil….” Abs interrupts and is like, “Well, I’m not saying anything, but….”This little trick works on the Transmorpher,
who gets excited by the idea of big money and oil and what have you and decides
he’d like to go into business with Abs and Gary (remember that if I gloss over
the business related stories, it’s just because my poor little brain gets
confused by these things and can’t follow them very well).

Okay, so Abs and Gary are in a
mood for celebrating and decide to go for a nice nighttime walk on the beach.There is one quick scene that I actually
didn’t care for, and I don’t know who to blame for it, but Gary and Abs start
to sorta dance around and sing this stupid song that sounds very made up to me,
something like, “I’m a mogul, you’re a mogul, he’s a mogul, wouldn’t you like
to be a mogul, too?”Seriously, is this
a real song?I did a little research to
find out (and by “research,” I mean typing in these lyrics on Google before
quickly giving up) and found nothing, so I can only assume that this stupid
song is made up for the show, and rightfully so, because these lyrics
suck (EDIT: HELPFUL COMMENTS LEFT ON MY BLOG TOLD ME THAT THIS IS FROM AN OLD DR. PEPPER ADVERTISEMENT).Now, this scene lasts less than
one minute, so it’s stupid for me to focus so much on it and criticize it, but
it was just one aspect of this ep I didn’t care for, because the song was dumb.

Like I said, we keep cross cutting
from Gary and Abs back to Valene and Olivia.When we return to them, the diner has emptied out and closed down and
poor, tired Olivia is sleeping with her head on the counter of one of the
booths.Not exactly comfortable
conditions for the poor girl (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the reason Val
and Olivia are even still here is because of some traffic accident on the
highway that’s going to prevent them from being able to get back home for the
entire night).Okay, so Val and Willie
McCoy have a little fight here, a quick verbal exchange where he asks what’s
been up her butt all night and why she came in so grouchy.I really liked J.V.A’s acting here, by the
way, and it reminded me that I don’t really mention her acting too much, except
for sometimes when I’m kinda mean and make fun of her for hamming it up a bit
(flashback to Will the Circle be Unbroken?).I do this with both Gary
and Val, by the way, where I just sorta assume that you readers know how much I
love both of them and I sorta forget to make special mention of their acting
and things they do which I appreciate.In this case, I just thought it was nice to see Val get mad and yell a
bit, and I thought J.V.A did a good job of demonstrating that, while she’s
yelling at this Willie guy, she’s not really mad at him, but rather at Gary.When Willie offers her a cozy room for the
night, she says no and yells a bit about how she doesn’t like him or his stupid
little diner and Bob Loblaw.

Anyway, it doesn’t take too long
for Val to cool down a bit and change her mind.Sleeping with your head on a counter is lovely and all, but now Olivia
is starting to sneeze every three seconds and Val is worried that she’ll come
down with a cold and Abby will be mad.So, she swallows her pride and knocks on the door leading to Willie’s
little house and he lets them come in to sleep for the night.Here the dichotomy continues to show its
presence, by the way, because after Val and Willie visit in front of the fire
for a few minutes and share stories, he tries to make a move on her and give
her a kiss.In case you’re thinking that
this sounds a little rapey, it’s not, so don’t worry.He leans in for that kiss, Val rather politely
declines, and then he gives her some space.The reason I mention this is because at pretty much the exact some
moment, Abs and Gary are frolicking on the beach, rolling around in the sand
and making out passionately while the waves crash behind them.So while Gary is weakening and allowing
Abby’s powers of seduction to work over him, Val still has faith in her
marriage and her duties as a wife and declines Willie’s invitation to a roll in
the hay.

After Abs and Gary make out on
the beach for awhile, we have something of a repeat of their exchange from back
in Power Play where Gary tries to
back off and be like, “No, we shouldn’t screw; we just got excited from the big
business deal.”Abs works him
beautifully in this scene, being like, “I’m tired of being jerked around by
you, Gary, I’m tired of going to the edge and then having you back off.”Well, her little speech clearly works,
because a fewminutes later they return
to the cul-de-sac, enter her house, and play a message from Lilimae on her giant
1982 voicemail box (did they call it voicemail in 1982?).Basically, the message informs them that Val
and Olivia will be gone all night but will return in the morning, and that’s
all they need to hear to decide to finally go up to the bedroom and shag.Oh boy, what a moment, and I’m not just
talking in terms of the storyline and all that buildup we’ve been experiencing,
but also just in how it’s filmed.This
is a stylish little scene, so let’s give the director (Harvey S. Laidman this
week) some props for infusing this with some cinematic flair.Again, as with our prior episode,Night, by this point I was neglecting my
notes and just sorta staring at the screen, but I definitely noted how he
frames this shot with Abs in the foreground and Gary looming in the background,
and then when they finally decide to start making their way to the bedroom, he
sorta zooms into this creepy statue looking thing before doing a nice dissolve
to a roaring fireplace over with Val and Willie.

Next time we see Gary and Abs,
they are in her bed, which is a classic sex bed, by the way.Seriously, I want to have an adulterous
affair in this bed, because it looks perfect.The sheets are definitely silk and they are this sorta hot pink color
and you just know that rolling around naked in the sheets would feel absolutely
divine.Abs asks how Gary is feeling and
he says guilty (we’ll talk more about his guilt or lack thereof next ep) and
they have a little exchange about what this roll in the sack means for
them and so on and so forth.

I think we all knew this was
gonna happen, but poor Lilimae is up late with insomnia, worrying about Val and
wondering where Gary is.She’s walking
through the house with, I think, a glass of milk, when she takes a quick peek
outside and sees Gary’s car parked across the street, over at Abby’s
house.Yup, that’s all she needs to see
to know that something is up.After all,
it’s gotta be past midnight at this point and yet Gary seems to be staying the
night over at Abby’s.Lilimae ain’t no
fool and she’s able to put two and two together.

Okay, we cut to the next day,
where Val and Olivia are taking off from Willie’s little diner.I think this scene is supposed to be more
moving than it actually is, mostly because I still didn’t like Willie at this
point in the episode, but Val gives him a big hug before they take off and I
think we’re supposed to infer that he gave her something of a self esteem boost
or helped her to see that her problems with Gary can be worked out, something
like that.Perhaps this would have more weight
for me if I knew that Willie would be back for more episodes, but he won’t be;
this is his one and only appearance on KL,
so even though the writing was solid, I felt his character was kinda just there
to be a plot device for Val and her feelings.

What a fabulous little ending
scene we get this week, because when Val returns home she gives Gary a big hug
and apologizes for the fight they had before, saying she’ll be more supportive
and so on, and as they’re hugging, you can see that look of guilt just eating
away on Gary’s face, and then we end on this great shot of Lilimae just glaring
at him, staring him directly in the eyes as if to say she knows exactly what he was up to last
night.Oh my goodness, how juicy.

While that’s the end of the
episode proper and the end of the Gary/Val/Abs storyline for the week, I haven’t
gotten around to a few other story beats in this ep, mostly involving
Richard.I’m pleased to say that he
hasn’t been shuffled offscreen after the events of last ep.He is put a bit on the back burner this week
so we can focus on Gary and Val and Abs, but he’s still around and he still
gets some good stuff.See, he’s now got
himself checked into a hospital for rehabilitation, and Karen is nice enough to
come and visit him early in the episode.This hospital looks rather cozy, by the way, and makes me want to have a
little mental breakdown so I can stay at it.It’s also not a straightjacket type of place, nor is it like that
ridiculous cartoon hospital that J.R. got stuck in during seasons thirteen and
fourteen of Dallas (was anyone even
watching at that point?).Instead, this
looks like the kind of place that’s voluntary and that you can just sorta hang
out in.

Anyway, Karen comes to speak
with him and finds him setting some stuff up in his room.I noted with interest that Richard’s got a
nice black and white photo of himself and Laura propped up on the mantle.Again, we’ve got some subtlety here, folks,
because the photo is just there,
sorta hanging out in the background during the scene.It never gets a big closeup or nothing, but
the fact that Richard has hung it up shows where his priorities lie.I think he’s definitely still in love with
Laura and, despite what happened last week, he still has some sort of hope that
she will come back to him and they can be a family again.What Karen believes he really needs is a
visit from Laura, if for no other reason than to lift his spirits.Now, if I recall correctly, Laura won’t be
visiting him until next week, so we’ll just have to be patient and see how that
turns out. In any case, I like how all this
is unfolding, that after Richard’s mental breakdown we are not being treated to
a bunch of over-the-top footage of him in some comic mental ward getting
electroshock therapy or something like that.Instead, this plays out in a very KL
way, more down to earth and realistic, and again I stress how much I enjoy
Karen and Richard’s friendship, the way she’ll come to show him support during
his most trying times.

That’s about all I got for this
week.Yes, Kenny and Ginger are also in
this episode and I think they might even have some dialogue, but who
cares?Let’s just skip them and gets
things wrapped up for the week.When I
first sat down to write about Acts of
Love, in my mind I was thinking of it as a step down fromNight, but I don’t know if that’s
entirely fair or accurate.Nightwas one of the most intense,
exciting, and provocative episodes of the entire series, so I feel kinda sorry
for any episode that has to come
directly after it.But let’s remember
that every episode simply cannot be that intense or else the audience would get
an intensity overload and their heads would explode.With that in mind, I found a lot to
appreciate about Acts of Love.It had cinematic flair that I appreciated,
its storytelling structure did a good job of showing the emotional distance
growing between Gary and Val, and it finally had Gary and Abs shag after nearly
forty episodes of buildup, which was a very satisfying thing to see.It also does a good job of keeping everything
moving, of propelling us onward towards that season finale and keeping the
audience hooked.So while I think as we
get further into the show and further away from this episode, I probably won’t
think back and be like, “Omigod, Acts of
Love, why that’s one of the greatest episodes ever!”, it was still really
good and I found a lot to appreciate in it.

We’ve got two episodes left
until we conclude season three, so let’s move right along to our penultimate
episode of the season,China Dolls.

About Me

I live in Seattle, Washington and am a recent college graduate who is currently stuck in a retail hole, but working to get out of it. My interests lie in reading, writing, editing, and proofreading. I love movies and television and I obviously have a very special love for KNOTS LANDING, because I have created an entire blog devoted to it. Feel free to comment on my blog or leave me an E-Mail anytime you want and I promise to get back to you.